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sign up, sahib. But, smatterer fact, I don’t like the idea of having a girl in the shop.’
    Ganesh had taken away the booklets on salesmanship and read them. The very covers, shining yellow and black, interested him; and what he read enthralled him. The writer had a strong feeling for colour and beauty and order. He spoke with relish about new paint, dazzling displays, and gleaming shelves.
    ‘These is first-class books,’ Ganesh told Ramlogan.
    ‘You must tell Leela so, sahib. Look, I go call she and you you go tell she and then perhaps she go want to read the books sheself.’
    It was an important occasion and Leela acted as though she felt its full importance. When she came in she didn’t look up and when her father spoke she only lowered her head a bit more and sometimes she giggled, coyly.
    Ramlogan said, ‘Leela, you hear what the sahib tell me. He like the books.’
    Leela giggled, but decorously.
    Ganesh asked, ‘Is you who write the sign?’
    ‘Yes, is me who write the sign.’
    Ramlogan slapped his thigh and said, ‘What I did tell you, sahib? The girl can really read and really write.’ He laughed.
    Then Leela did a thing so unexpected it killed Ramlogan’s laughter.
    Leela spoke to Ganesh. She asked him a question!
    ‘You could write too, sahib?’
    It took him off his guard. To cover up his surprise he began rearranging the booklets on the table.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I could write.’ And then, stupidly, almost without knowing what he was saying, ‘And one day I go write books like these. Just like these.’
    Ramlogan’s mouth fell open.
    ‘You only joking, sahib.’
    Ganesh slapped his hand down on the booklets, and heard himself saying, ‘Yes, just like these. Just like these.’
    Leela’s wide eyes grew wider and Ramlogan shook his head in amazement and wonder.

4. The Quarrel with Ramlogan
    ‘I SUPPOSE, ’ Ganesh wrote in The Years of Guilt, ‘I had always, from the first day I stepped into Shri Ramlogan’s shop, considered it as settled that I was going to marry his daughter. I never questioned it. It all seemed preordained.’
    What happened was this.
    One day when Ganesh called Ramlogan was wearing a clean shirt. Also, he looked freshly washed, his hair looked freshly oiled; and his movements were silent and deliberate, as though he were doing a puja. He dragged up the small bench from the corner and placed it near the table; then sat on it and watched Ganesh eat, all without saying a word. First he looked at Ganesh’s face, then at Ganesh’s plate, and there his gaze rested until Ganesh had eaten the last handful of rice.
    ‘Your belly full, sahib?’
    ‘Yes, my belly full.’ Ganesh wiped his plate clean with an extended index finger.
    ‘It must be hard for you, sahib, now that your father dead.’
    Ganesh licked his finger. ‘I don’t really miss him, you know.’
    ‘No, sahib, don’t tell me. I know is hard for you. Supposing, just supposing – I just putting this up to you as a superstition, sahib – but just supposing you did want to get married, it have nobody at all to fix up things for you.’
    ‘I don’t even know if I want to get married.’ Ganesh rose from the table, rubbing his belly until he belched his appreciation of Ramlogan’s food.
    Ramlogan rearranged the roses in the vase. ‘Still, you is a educated man, and you could take care of yourself. Not like me, sahib. Since I was five I been working, with nobody looking after me. Still, all that do something for me. Guess what it do for me, sahib.’
    ‘Can’t guess. Tell me what it do.’
    ‘It give me cha’acter and sensa values, sahib. That’s what it give me. Cha’acter and sensa values.’
    Ganesh took the brass jar of water from the table and went to the Demerara window to wash his hands and gargle.
    Ramlogan was smoothing out the oilcloth with both hands and dusting away some crumbs, mere specks. ‘I know,’ he said apologetically, ‘that for a man like you, educated and reading books